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Backdraft (1991)

Director:
Ron Howard
COUNTRY
USA
GENRE
Drama/Thriller
NORWEGIAN TITLE
Flammehav
RUNNING TIME
137 minutes
Producer:
Richard B. Lewis
John Watson
Pen Densham
Brian Grazer
Screenwriter:
Gregory Widen


Cast includes:

CHARACTER ACTOR/ACTRESS RATING
Lieutenant Stephen Bull McCaffrey Kurt Russell
Prob. Firefighter Brian McCaffrey William Baldwin
Captain Donald Shadow Rimgale Robert De Niro ½
Ronald Bartel Donald Sutherland ½
Jennifer Vaitkus Jennifer Jason Leigh ½
Senior Firefighter John Axe Adcox Scott Glenn ½
Helen McCaffrey Rebecca De Mornay
Prob. Firefighter Tim Krizminski Jason Gedrick
Advisor Martin Swayzak J. T. Walsh ½
Ricco Clint Howard

 

Review

This high-budget 1991 success about firefighters and arsonists in Chicago has got the subtlety of a B-movie, with its overdrawn pathos and characters. Every single action-scene in here feels like a choreographed set-piece and is scored in the most melodramatic way by Hans Zimmer. But the film has got the scale and insistence to become fairly interesting nonetheless, not least thanks to Donald Sutherland’s great little cameo as an incarcerated arsonist whom our main protagonist uses as his Hannibal Lecter to solve the mystery. The cast is star-studded but uneven; Kurt Russell and William Baldwin fail to convince.

Copyright © 26.04.2019 Fredrik Gunerius Fevang

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